Fears & Phobias
Do you find yourself avoiding certain objects or situations as a result of anxiety so intense, that it starts to affect your daily life?
It probably means that you have a phobia about said object or situation. And it could be anything!
A phobia is an irrational fear of something that you believe, can cause you severe harm. Some are perfectly natural, for example, spiders, heights or even clowns.
Some, however, are slightly more irrational, for example, Arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth!
And, even though they know the response is inappropriate or unnecessarily extreme, they can experience symptoms such as:
- sweating
- trembling
- muscle tightness
- panic attack
The worrying thing is that they get stronger over time. These internal anxieties become so associated with a particular object or situations that each time the phobia is experienced, their extreme response only reinforces and strengthens the phobia.
Some common phobias include:
- Arachnophobia: fear of spiders
- Aerophobia: fear of flying
- Cynophobia: fear of dogs
- Astraphobia: fear of thunder and lightning
- Entomophobia: fear of insects
- Acrophobia: fear of heights
- Trypanophobia: fear of needles/injections
- Hydrophobia: fear of water
- Agoraphobia: fear of open spaces
- Mysophobia: fear of germs and dirt
- Claustrophobia: fear of enclosed spaces
- Ophidiophobia: fear of snakes
- Pyrophobia: fear of fire
- Xenophobia: fear of strangers
For most of us, the chance of having to face our phobias are few and far between and so they are manageable. However, people with severe phobias can experience fear so intense that it begins to affect their everyday lives.
The good news is that it is treatable using hypnotherapy.
Using a solution-focused approach, we’ll begin to change the response and create new, positive internal thoughts for when you’re next faced with your phobia.
And don’t panic, we don’t ever expose you to your phobia – you will do that in your own time when you are ready.
